by Mark Greaney
“Why not?”
“Why do you think? Mexico makes a ton of money from people going over the border. There was no reason to stop this guy. I figured we would probably try to help him.”
“Okay. So, you guys are shitty neighbors. How does that help us in our—”
“I know who this guy is. You can buy visas for the Gamboas, get them up into the USA.”
Court thought it over for a moment. “What if we don’t have any money?”
“I have money.” It was Laura. She’d entered the mirador from the second-floor hallway, sat down behind them, listening to three men she did not know forty-eight hours earlier now discuss the fate of her family.
Court turned to her. “You do?”
“There is an army pension for Guillermo, my late husband. I am given a little money every year. I can take it all out at once if I want to, although there is a penalty.”
“How much can you get?”
“Five hundred thousand pesos.”
Court did the math in his head. “Sixty grand?” He looked to Ramses. “Is that enough?”
The federale shrugged. “For eight people? No idea. But I’m sure it’s enough to get the embassy man’s attention.”
Court looked back to Laura. “You would do this? You would give up all that money for Elena and your parents and—”
“Of course I would.” She seemed offended. “This is my family. I would do anything for them.”
“And you’d go to the U.S.?”
She shook her head. “They should go. My mom and dad, Elena and Diego. But not me. My home is Mexico. I do not want to leave.”
“Why not?” Court asked, incredulously.
“I just can’t pick up and leave everything behind.”
“Why not?” he repeated himself, then added, “I do it all the time.”
She looked at him a long time in the night. “Then you will not understand what it means to belong somewhere.”
Down below them the truck tried to crank again. Gentry could hear the battery weakening, losing more and more of its charge with each failed turn of the key. After a third long and futile attempt to start the truck, those on the mirador heard Ignacio cussing loudly.
“¡Hijo de puta!” Son of a bitch!
“Well, first things first, we’re still a long way from getting out of here,” said Court.
Ramses and Martin moved off to other parts of the casa grande; there was an entire west wing surrounding a courtyard near the chapel that needed an occasional patrol, as no mirador covered that side. But Laura sat next to Court on the veranda; they drank strong black coffee and looked out together over the back patio.
“This house is something, isn’t it?” Laura said after a time.
Gentry chuckled, looked out on the unkempt estate. “Yeah, it’s a fucking shithole.”
He felt Laura looking at him for a moment, then she turned away. “I love it. Guillermo and I were going to live here when he finished his tour with the army.”
Dammit, Court. Some time, some day, some how, just try to say something right. “I mean… it’s nice… just needs to be straightened up a little.”
He heard her laugh softly; it even echoed behind them in the bedroom. It was beautiful to hear, though it somehow did not fit her sad, serious, and reverent personality. “You’re right. It would have taken years to fix it up. But Guillermo wanted to take care of his parents, to restart the farm, to have kids here, and to turn it into a happy place.”
“I’m sorry about everything,” Court said.
“Me, too,” she replied.
* * *
Two hours later Ignacio was still in the barn working on the truck. Court had relieved Diego at the second-floor window above the front door on the north side of the house. Court lay prone, looking out at the tree line and the windy, rocky drive that snaked down and then disappeared past the dim moonlight’s reach on its way to the front gate, a hundred meters or more to the north.
He fingered Luis’s old shotgun lying on the tile beside him. He’d given the M1 carbines to the others, had taken some double-aught buckshot shells from one of the shotguns taken from a fallen Tequila municipale, but left the man’s weapon out on the patio because the barrel had been damaged in the gunfight. Court had found another pump shotgun dropped by a fallen Jalisco state policeman but had been happy with the feel and function of the long, heavy, two-shot relic, so he decided to keep Luis’s shotgun as his primary weapon.
He was sleepy, but Luz had just delivered him some more violently strong black coffee, and it would help him along for a few hours more.
He’d need it for the jolt as well as the warmth; it was below fifty degrees, and he wore nothing more than the denim jacket and his damp pants as he lay exposed to the night breeze on the balcony.
Damn, he wanted to get the fuck out of here.
Some progress had been made to that end. The battery from Eddie’s F-350 had been pulled and brought to the barn by Ernesto and Diego; fresh gas had been siphoned out of the newer vehicle and transferred to the older. It was just a matter of time now before they all piled in like sardines in a can, raced for the front gate with Martin and Ramses leading the way on their motorcycles with their Colt Shorty’s blazing, and hoped for a lot of luck to get out of here alive.
Court rubbed his burning eyes, fought sleep for the third time this minute.
He looked down at his watch: 4:06. He knew that if the Black Suits could get another crew assembled in time, then they would come before dawn. There was no way they would not; they had no reason to wait for the light of day.
It was well past the prime time for an attack in normal situations. At first the American was pleased; he hoped that by repelling the first wave his little force had caused the enemy to back off, to leave the hacienda for a while in order to regroup.
But no, that was not it at all. The three a.m. time for normally hitting an enemy position was based on standard guard rotations.
His enemy knew there were not enough here to guard this entire complex in the first place, much less rotate in and out for rest and food.
Yeah, Court realized, his enemies were smarter than he was. He had not even considered the possibility until now. They would hit again before first light. No matter how many or few there were.
Come on, Ignacio, you drunk bastard. Get that truck going!
TWENTY-EIGHT
There were only twelve in the second wave, but they had better training, better equipment, better intelligence, and a better plan of attack than that first failed attempt. All twelve were marinos, Mexican marines, and they’d driven up to the hacienda from their base in Guadalajara on orders from Spider Cepeda himself.
Though they were regular military men, they moonlighted as sicarios for the Black Suits. They were well trained in small-unit assault tactics and armed with HK MP5 submachine guns, flash-bang grenades, body armor, and olive drab uniforms that blended well into the green black predawn landscape of this part of the Sierra Madre Mountains. They’d debriefed the survivors of the first assault over the back wall of the casa grande. The shell-shocked “fence posts” who’d scrambled back over the wall to safety without shotgun pellets or 9 mm rounds embedded in their bodies had been ordered to stick around to tell the next crew what they were up against. The marines began gearing up alongside their two-ton truck while the cops nervously smoked and told them all they had seen.
The military men had then given their weapons and radios a final check, broken into three four-man squads, excused themselves from the exhausted and overwhelmed amateurs, and began walking towards the walls of the hacienda.
The four men of Team A, “Antonio” in the Spanish phonetic alphabet or “alpha” in the English phonetic alphabet, breached the hacienda by climbing over a chained gate on the western wall, deep in the tall grass and wild blue agave. They bound towards the darkened house in teams of two, with one pair covering for the other pair while they moved. They made it to a broken-stone grain silo and appr
oached the chapel that jutted out from the western side of the casa grande.
Team Barcelona scaled the rear wall, near the area where the first wave had gone over three hours earlier. Once inside the hacienda grounds, they pivoted to the right, climbed through the wooden fence of the corral, moved behind an old stable of rotten wood, picking their footfalls carefully to keep from stumbling over the stone and lumber and refuse.
Team Carmen breached the hacienda to the east, landed inside the grounds behind the willow trees near the pond. They moved around to the side and then to the front of the building, directed their attention and their progress towards the old stone and wood barn from where they heard an internal combustion engine desperately trying to internally combust.
Within minutes Barcelona had arrived at the trellis that ran along the eastern side of the patio. They checked in by radio with Antonio and found them in position to the west of the casa grande. This team had sent one of its men towards the freestanding chapel near the house to investigate a light that could be seen through cracks in the old stone.
Seven minutes after breaching the wall, three teams of four men were ready to hit the hacienda’s defenders simultaneously from three positions.
* * *
Court rubbed his eyes again. Started to look down to his watch.
A shout from the other side of the house. A man—Martin?
The crack of a rifle.
Gentry’s discipline allowed him to keep his position and to watch the trees and the driveway in front of him.
Only the tips of the pine trees swayed. There was no more movement on this side of the house.
Damn, damn, damn. All his training told him to hold his ground, not to turn, to trust his plan and his fortifications and his fellow defenders to each stay responsible for his or her field of fire.
If Martin’s sector was attacked, Ramses and Laura would be on either side, they could see what was going on, and they could respond much better than he, here on the opposite end of the building.
Trust them. Don’t leave your post. Just trust your plan.
Another shot. And then a full automatic burst from a submachine gun.
Gentry focused his worry, turned it to a concentrated stare into the dark before him.
Nothing. No movement, no attack. Nothing at all.
Trust your plan, Court.
More gunfire, more shouting behind him.
Trust your plan, Court!
An explosion. A flash-bang grenade detonating inside the house on the second floor.
Shit! Trust your plan, Court!
Then Laura Gamboa’s voice. A shout.
A scream.
Fuck the plan.
Court Gentry rose to his knees, leapt to his feet, hefted the heavy shotgun in his right hand, and he turned and ran back into the house as fast as he could, leaving his post behind.
* * *
Only by pure dumb luck did he see the first assassin. Court ran into the dark living room along the western wall; the archway to the kitchen was just ahead and on his left, on his right the archway to the formal dining room. He’d planned on shooting past this room to hit the stairs to make his way to the landing and Laura’s position down the hall.
But there in the dark, not ten feet ahead in his path, the black tip of a weapon’s barrel appeared from the dining room. Gentry reacted in a single bound, let his feet fly out ahead of him, and he dropped to the cold stone tile like a ballplayer sliding into home plate. He slid on past the dining room’s archway on his right side, his long shotgun barrel up high towards the threat. As he slid into the archway, he saw the sicario in the dark; the man had obviously heard a noise, but he had not yet lowered his weapon towards its source.
Court pressed his shotgun’s muzzle into the marine’s belt buckle as Court stopped there on the ground, pulled one of the triggers, and pumped nine.33-caliber rounds into and through the man’s midsection, nearly ripping him in two and sending him flying backwards through the air behind the echoing boom and short, wide flame. His shredded body landed flat on the dining room table. There it bucked and spasmed as the electrical current from his central nervous system trickled out to his dying muscles.
Gentry rolled up to his knees before the man even came to rest on the table. He had not seen which way the sicario’s weapon had flown, and he did not want to waste time searching for it in the darkness, so he got back up and ran on, reloading the smoking barrel of his big gun as he reached the staircase.
He ascended three steps in a bound.
More firing, from two locations now. At the top of the stairs he turned right, heard an incredible blast ahead in a room off the hallway. Through smoke and dust and darkness, he saw Laura Gamboa backing up quickly from the master bedroom. Her pistol was out in front of her, but Court could plainly see it had locked open after firing its last round.
Court shouldered up to her, she stumbled backwards towards him in the hallway, and he caught her before she fell to the ground. At first he worried that she’d been shot, but then he recognized the telltale effects of a concussion grenade. Her pupils were dilated, and she wobbled wildly on her knees. “How many?” He asked. Her body was small but sinewy and muscular; he helped her regain a standing position.
She recovered a little and looked at him. “I don’t know. Marinos. They just appeared in the hallway!”
“They are in the house?”
“¡Sí! They are everywhere!”
Court grabbed Laura roughly by the arm, turned, and ran back up the hall, away from the mirador and towards the eastern part of the house, running past the landing overlooking the darkened living room.
* * *
Gunfire in the near distance did not stop Ignacio Gamboa from making one last adjustment to the carburetor. Neither did the tears fogging his vision and streaming down his face. By the light of a single red candle positioned on the engine, he finished his final turn of the screw. He shut the hood seconds later, staggered around towards the open passenger door, and pulled the half-empty bottle of clear anejo tequila off the rusted roof of the old Dodge truck.
He took a long, gulping swig.
Cracks and snaps and pops of weapons of differing calibers grew in frequency back behind him in the casa grande as the battle intensified.
Ignacio spun, threw the tequila bottle across the barn; it slammed against the stone wall and shattered into wet crystalline shards. He then climbed behind the wheel of the old Dodge and reached for the key. With a single turn the truck fired; the engine coughed and missed here and there, but the engine’s power was strong enough and constant enough to trust the vehicle.
Ignacio put his head in his hands and cried.
He had known for the last hour, all along while he worked, that he would get the truck started, he would get behind the wheel, he would put the transmission into drive, and he would drive the fuck out of here and leave everyone behind.
His parents, his sister, his nephew.
His brother’s unborn son.
Nothing he could do could possibly save them. And this was the only way to save himself.
He turned on the headlights.
No one survived a death warrant by the Black Suits. Staying with his family would be suicide, and suicide required a strength Ignacio Gamboa knew well he did not possess. He was not his little brother Eduardo, valiantly fighting his enemies and always providing for his family and friends.
And he was not his little sister, Lorita, giving of herself and relying on her faith.
No, Ignacio Gamboa had neither the gift of valor nor the gift of faith. He was just a man, just a weak man, and he was scared.
He was more like his brother Rodrigo. Weak, scared, looking out for himself and taking what others would give to him.
He’d seen Rodrigo shot through the forehead yesterday morning in the Parque Hidalgo, watched his brains blow apart. Ignacio was like his brother Rodrigo in many respects, but he did not want to be so much like his brother that he ended up dead.
Ignacio hadn’t mentioned it to the others, but he knew a place to go where Los Trajes Negros would not get them. He had friends who lived up in Durango, in Madrigal country. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of villages there where DLR and his Italian-suit-clad soldier boys would not dare go. Yes, if Ignacio made it up into the Sierra Madres of Durango, he’d have to work for los Vaqueros, he’d have to grow pot or coke or opium, or traffic pot or coke or heroin or meth, or kill others over pot or coke or heroin or meth, but what was the big deal? Better that than ending up like Rodrigo or Eduardo.
He did not tell his family before, because they would not go with him. And he did not tell them now, because they would not go with him.
He’d go alone.
He wiped tears from his eyes with his hairy, sweaty, meaty forearm, and he shoved the vehicle into gear.
He’d planned on just smashing through the closed double doors at the front of the barn, but they creaked open in front of him. Two men appeared in his headlights.
They raised weapons towards him.
“No!” Ignacio Gamboa stomped on the gas.
The two sicarios opened fire with MP5s, blasting the windshield and the hood and perforating the heavy man behind the wheel, riddling his spasming, convulsing body with brass-jacketed lead as the truck rolled forwards and past them, veered to the left as his face slammed down on the steering wheel, slowed as his dead foot slid off the gas pedal, and came to rest gently against the stone fountain in the center of the driveway’s roundabout.
The sicarios reloaded their rifles and fired again into the fat man’s twitching body.
* * *
Inez Corrales was not where she was supposed to be. Thirty minutes earlier she and Elena and Luz had been in the cellar, as directed by the gringo, lying on bedding, and by the light of a single veladora, they had prayed and talked of their lost loved ones. But after an hour there she told the other ladies that she needed to use the bathroom, so she walked down the hallway, past Ernesto Gamboa, who was dozing on the stone steps. At the top of the stairs she passed young Diego, lying on the kitchen floor but awake, and she told him she would be right back. But she entered the living room, crossed it to a long hallway that led to the western wing of the casa grande.
